Billie Holiday Biography

Billie holiday (born Eleanora Harris (19151959) was an African American jazz singer and songwriter. Her interpret style, strongly inspired by jazz musicians, lead to a new way of using word choice and rhythm. A critic named John furnish once wrote that Holiday changed the art of American pop vocals forever. She only co-wrote a few songs, but a number of them have become jazz standards that umpteen musicians strive to live up to.Some of these standards were set by songs of hers such as God Bless the Child, Dont Explain, Fine and Mellow, and Lady Sings the discolor. She also became famous for singing Easy Living, Good Morning Heartache, and Strange Fruit, a protest songwhich became one of her standards and was do famous with her 1939 recording. In Harlem she started singing in various night clubs. Holiday took her professional pen name fromBillie Dove, an actress she admired, and the musician Clarence Holiday, thus was born Billie Holiday.The makerJohn Hammond arranged for Holi day to make her recording debut, at age 18, in November 1933 with Benny Goodman, singing two songs Your Mothers Son-In-Law and Riffin the Scotch. The latter being her first elephantine hit. Son-in-Law sold 300 records,but Riffin the Scotch, sold 5,000 records. Hammond was very impressed by Holidays vocalization style. He said of Holiday that, Her singing almost changed my music tastes and my musical theater life because she was the first girl singer Id come across who actually sang like an improvising jazz genius. Hammond compared Holiday positively to Armstrong and said she had a full sense of lyrics at her young age. In early 1959 Holiday found out that she hadcirrhosis of the liver. The doctor told her to stop drinking, which she did for a short time, but short returned to heavy drinking. Some of her friends tried to get her to check into a hospital, but she did not go. On May 31, 1959, Holiday was forcibly taken to Metropolitan infirmary in New York suffering fromliverandhea rt disease.She was arrested for having drugs with her as she lay dying, and her hospital room was invaded by the police. Police officers were stationed at the door to her room because of her drugs. Holiday remained under police guard at the hospital until she died frompulmonary edemaandheart failure caused by cirrhosis of the liver on July 17, 1959. In the terminal years of her life, she had been gradually tricked out of her earnings because of her drug and alcohol addictions. She died with seventy cents in the bank and seven-hundred fifty dollar tabloid fee.